Spring Sycamore

This spring I made a first visit to a local state park known for it’s Redbud trees. One of the few natural stands this far north in the midwest. I need to return next year but did manage a few decent shots on a less than ideal (very sunny) day. Nothing very original but the sycamore and colors were wonderful eye candy I could not resist.

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Real nice spring scene. I would be tempted to pull cyan out of the sycamore, but I generally have that bias. The dark and bright plants back to front provide a nice sense of depth and the tree lines make a great anchor.

Interesting. My immediate reaction was that I’m looking at a ballerina standing on one leg with the other raised high. It’s funny how we relate forms to ourselves that way. I could see reducing the blues from the tree shadows as Harley mentions. You could warm this up as well, but it might give it a look you don’t favor.

Alan,

What a great tree! One way to bring order from chaos is by having a bold element that stands out against that chaos. The sycamore most certainly does that! Very cool how the black, grays and whites stand out - almost out of place in the dense forest. I like the colors of the redbud and the spring greens; more like a painter’s palette, rather than an image about redbuds and spring greens - if that makes sense.

I didn’t really notice the blue/cyan until I downloaded and opened. Just for options, I thought the bg highlights and some areas of the sycamore were a bit bright. So I added a couple of TK Light’s masks to drop the luminosity in general of the brightest areas and painted a little out in the sycamore trunk. then a simple Hue/Sat layer to drop both the blue and cyan way down. This image with the color palette is one where you can basically kill the blue and cyan and leave the greens, yellows and any reds untouched.

Here’s a quick edit. I also cropped slightly from the right. Just because…

I see the ballerina!

Lon

Alan this is really nice, and I too see Igor’s ballerina. My thoughts on this image mirror Lon’s comments, the wonderful sycamore tree does a great job of taming the forest chaos. The dominant subject organizes the scene, but after focusing on that, one can appreciate the nice colors and soft light in the rest of the forest. I really like what @Lon_Overacker has done with color. The warmer yellows, greens and magentas creates a more inviting feeling. This scene might also benefit from adding a light Orton Effect for some soft glow effect. Try it at low opacity, and/or applying it to highlights only via luminosity masks.

Thanks to @Harley_Goldman, @Igor_Doncov, @Lon_Overacker and @Ed_McGuirk for your thoughts and help on this one.

Harley your suggested removal of cyan was a good one.

Igor, I also see the ballerina… now I can’t unsee the ballerina! :wink:

Lon, thank you for the subtle but very instructive repost. It is greatly appreciated. I will definitely return to this area next spring, the sycamore bark alone is worth it.

Ed, I will definitely give Orton a try.

Alan, I really like how you’ve used the graceful shape and the textures in the tree trunk to create a fine spring woods view. Igor’s ballerina vision is a fun one. I too was thinking that a bit of burning-in of the brights in the background would be add a bit more color and let the tree and the mid-ground redbuds show a bit more strongly.

Winter time snow plus Sycamore tree plus B&W = Good potential too.

Thanks for the suggestions @Mark_Seaver. I was originally questioning this scene because of the bright upper portions and apparently the consensus is I needed to be a little heavier handed with the burning brush or TK masks.